FirmTape compared

The tools that sell dealer-gamma positioning, read off their own public pages. One row is marked amber against us, and it is there on purpose — the honest version of a comparison table is the only kind worth publishing.

Head to head

The questions this product is actually shopped under, one page each, the rival's pages read on a stated date: FirmTape vs SpotGamma, FirmTape vs MenthorQ, FirmTape vs FlashAlpha, FirmTape vs Profitabul, FirmTape vs GEXBot, and the whole field priced and dated on SpotGamma alternatives.

The row we lose, and why it is in the table

OptionsDepth reads participant-tagged data straight from the exchange: their dealer side is stated by Cboe, not guessed. Ours is not. The default view, the volume book, applies the standard dealer convention to the day's traded volume and signs nothing. The measured book, one switch away, infers the side of each print from which side of the spread the aggressor hit. Rather than describe either with an adjective we publish the measurements: see which gamma measure sees anything and which book is the zero-gamma flip. If exchange-tagged truth per strike is the thing you are buying, they have it and we do not.

What we have instead is the thing that makes an inferred number checkable: 1,122+ finished sessions, free, no account. Every level this site has ever printed sits in that archive next to what price actually did. Their history window is 30 days unless you buy the data separately. So the two products answer different questions — theirs is "what is the dealer's tagged position right now", ours is "does this level do anything, measured over four years, and can I test my own rule against it".

Two more, read on 2026-10-03

Neither fits the grid above (six columns is what a table carries on a phone), so they get a smaller one. Every cell is what their own pages state; a blank is what they do not say.

The one-line reading of each. GammaFlip ships a working GEX replay, which until it appeared only this site did; how far back its recording goes and how the dealer side is decided, the pages do not say, and its US open interest is the prior day's. GEXDesk is free, with a paid intraday tier announced, and says on its own page that the levels come from the previous day's close: a different object from a book rebuilt from the options tape, which is why "free" alone settles nothing.

Where each of the others is genuinely stronger

• OptionsDepth — exchange-tagged participant data, and Charm/Vanna projections as heatmaps rather than single numbers.
• TanukiTrade — breadth (250+ symbols) and delivery where traders already sit: TradingView indicators and Discord bots.
• GammaEdge — education. A structured course, a daily and a weekly newsletter, and by far the deepest library of explanatory writing in this niche.
• OPEX Trader — surface area: 390+ analytics tabs, eleven asset modes and a desktop app that runs its models locally.
• GammaFlip — breadth: crypto beside the indices, ETFs and mega-caps in one subscription, and a replay that ships today rather than being promised.

And the rest of where this one is

• The series is for sale as files. The DATASET licence delivers every finished session, full per-strike detail, the evening it closes, for research that has to run on your own machine rather than in a browser. $249/month.
• No signals, ever. Measurements and verdicts, never an instruction to buy.
• Levels where you chart, in beta. The flip and the walls inside NinjaTrader, Sierra Chart, ATAS, Quantower, Bookmap, MotiveWave, TrendSpider, TradingView and thinkorswim, from the levels API, included in LIVE. Young next to the rivals' plugins, and labelled so.
• One symbol done properly, a hundred done plainly. SPX is rebuilt from the tape second by second, with a book signed print by print. Four more indexes, 41 ETFs and 60 stocks carry the volume and open-interest books, free, and replay on the same chart: each rebuilt from the option chain every five minutes, with the price moving every second.
• Large orders as orders. A print feed reports the short wing of a roll as a call sweep. The order ledger folds the legs back into the parent, names the structure, places it against the measured book and ranks it by what it did to that book rather than by the cheque; when the side cannot be worked out, it says so. Every finished session is free, today's is $39/month.
• An assistant that reads the book, not the web. ASK sits over the chart and answers about the symbol, day and minute on screen from the site's own measurements, stamped with the minute it read, with links that move the replay; it refuses buy and sell calls and gives the measured facts instead. Included with any subscription.
• ES and NQ at the future's price. ES and NQ are the SPX and NDX books moved by the day's basis, measured from put-call parity on the index's quarterly options, with no CME data; against real ES over 206 sessions the median residual was +0.02 point. Free fifteen minutes late, live in LIVE. How it is made.
• Levels in Telegram. @FirmTapeBot sends LIVE subscribers alerts on their own symbol list (the flip, the walls, the gamma regime) and answers /levels for anyone, fifteen minutes late without LIVE; the channel @firmtape posts SPX, ES and NQ three times a session.
• Before the open. From 04:00 ET, LIVE's PREMARKET panel estimates the market on the chart from its stand-in ETF's live price and yesterday's closing ratio, against yesterday's flip and walls in its own points, with how much of its average daily range (ATR) the move has used and the morning's releases marked, and the main chart carries the premarket from the evening before, left of 09:30. Every number is labelled an estimate, never an official print.
• A calendar that reports what followed. Under every FOMC, CPI, auction and expiration on /calendar: the range, the book and the print, measured.

Check the archive first See pricing

“—” means no such product was offered on that vendor's own public pages when they were last read; it is not a claim that none exists. A blank cell in the ES/NQ row means that vendor was not covered by the 2026-09-30 reading that row comes from; in the before-the-open row, by the 2026-10-09 reading. Competitor details were read from each vendor's own public pages on 2026-10-03, the two named beneath the table included, and are reproduced for comparison only; they change without notice — check the source before relying on any of them. No affiliation with, or endorsement by, any product named. Not investment advice.